A Thoughtful Response to Mr. Piper – Part 1

As I mentioned in my last post (The “Traditional” Christian View of Nakedness – Part 1), a reader pointed me to John Piper’s article about nakedness and I reposted it in its entirety, only highlighting in red the portions that I felt were not biblically defensible, and actually incorrect. This was also the first piece I sent to my correspondent.

He then wrote me back with his response to the passages I had highlighted in red with questions pertaining to those sections. Below are my answers to his questions as they relate to Mr. Piper’s article. His questions are in green and my responses follow.

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Q. What do you attribute Adam and Eve’s shame to?

I think a better question is... “To what did Adam and Eve attribute their shame?” And the next question is, “Were they correct?” They certainly acted shamefully, and they certainly felt shame, but does it make sense that nudity suddenly became shameful when it was not shameful just a moment before?

Obviously God had no problem with their nudity before the fall... Did God’s perspective change when they sinned, or did their own? A little thought about the event reveals that their shame was actually misplaced. They had no need to cover their genitals (what did their genitals have to do with their sin?)... they needed to run in repentance and fall before their Maker to seek forgiveness and restoration... all the while still naked as He had made them. Their body shame was a actually a false shame, and as a result they applied their efforts to an incorrect (and sinful) response!

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Q. You highlighted “I deserve to be shamed.” Are you rejecting the link between Adam’s nudity and shame?

Yes, I am rejecting that idea. Surely Adam felt the shame and placed it on his own nudity, but was he thinking clearly at that moment? His shame should have been on his actions, not on his physical attributes. Remember Who had personally crafted his genitals... to whom then was it an insult when Adam was ashamed of one of the body parts given to him by the God Who loved him? (more on that in later posts)

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Q. Are you rejecting the implication that if Adam felt shame in his nudity that we should too? Or are you rejecting it for another reason?

Being ashamed of his nudity is not the only thing that Adam did after he sinned...

• he also hid from God.
• He also blamed his wife and ultimately God.
• He evidently did not truly repent, even when confronted by God.

Would you accept the implication that because Adam hid from God, that we should too? Would you accept the suggestion that because Adam blamed his wife for his own sin that we should too? How then can you accept the idea that because Adam was ashamed of his nudity, that we should be, too? Does that really make sense? (Did Adam do anything right immediately after he sinned?)

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Q. In the eighth paragraph you highlighted “The simple, open nakedness of innocence now feels inconsistent with the guilty person that I am. I feel ashamed.” Why do you disagree with this/what alternate explanation would you give?

Think about this... Adam had just sinned. He now has, for the first time in his life, a sinful nature. He is now the proud possessor of a depraved mind. He had no idea what had just invaded his intellect, and he had no idea how to battle it.

Now you and I, we’ve lived with this reality all our lives. Furthermore, because we are learning to listen to the indwelling Spirit instead, we are (hopefully) making headway towards following the promptings of God instead of our sin nature. Furthermore, we have learned some of the ways of our enemy and we know that he’s really a liar; we know that he’s out to destroy us so we are not ignorant of his schemes as Adam was.

How much of all this did Adam understand immediately after that moment of sin? Any of it? We understand all these things at least to some degree in our own lives, yet we still struggle to walk according to the truth! What chance did Adam have?

Mr. Piper’s analysis implies that Adam understood guilt, that he understood and could accurately trace the source of shame in his own heart, and that he correctly ascertained that covering his own genitals would make everything better.

No, I don’t think Adam understood any of that about himself or why he felt as he did. I don’t think he yet realized that Satan had deceived him and Eve or that he needed to stop listening to him. And no, I don’t think Satan stopped talking or influencing them as soon as they took their bite of the fruit. I think Adam suddenly experienced the horrific absence of God in his heart for the very first time; I believe that he was desperate to do something... anything... to make that feeling go away.

Meanwhile, Satan was not finished deceiving them nor making other suggestions about what to do. “You’re naked!” he might have said! What would “naked” have meant to them, anyway? There never had been “clothed,” so how could there be “naked”? Satan had to actually invent the very concept that their natural state (as God created them) was a problem! (God’s question to Adam in Gen. 3:11, “Who told you that you were naked?” clearly implicates Satan as the one who informed them of their nakedness.)

One more detail to point out, by the way... did you notice in your reading that Adam never claimed to feel shame? In fact, the only place that “shame” is mentioned is in Gen. 2:25, before the fall... declaring that they felt NO shame. Thereafter, Adam claimed to be motivated by “fear.” Now... why do we emphasize the rightness of “shame” but not talk about the “fear”?

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Q. One thing that made me very curious was your highlighting of the parenthetical statement “as there apparently was blood shed in the killing of the animals of the skins” What would make you think that there was no blood shed?

Read the text again. It doesn’t mention anything about any animal shedding it’s blood. Did it happen? Possibly. Was it the first sacrifice for sin? (and this is really why I highlighted it... most people teach that it is...). Most likely not! Here’s why I say this:

A sacrifice for sin is not something that simply happens every day like the sun coming up. It is for a specific purpose and how it is carried out matters. See if you don’t agree with these biblical observations about sacrifices that were not true in this case:

• Sacrifices require repentance on the part of the sinner.
  • Is there any evidence that Adam and Eve repented? We can’t know what we were not told, of course, but the data we have in the text would lead us to the opposite conclusion.
• Sacrifices were carried out by the hand of the sinner himself.
  • Where in all of the Bible was a sacrifice performed by the hand of God? Part of the idea of a sacrifice is that I must by my own hand take the life of the one dying in my stead.
• Sacrifices are a picture and foreshadowing of Christ’s work on the cross.
  • Nowhere in ALL the Bible is this event referenced as the prototype sacrifice for sin. Think about that for a minute... the first sacrifice in all of the Bible, yet it never warrants another mention? It’s not even referred to as a sacrifice in the Genesis narrative itself.
  • Contrast that narrative with the story of the Passover lamb... that sacrifice gets LOTS of airtime throughout the Bible, from Exodus to Revelation!

So... was there blood shed for the “skins”? Perhaps. Was it a “first sacrifice” or a picture of Christ? I don’t think so. That’s why I highlighted that comment. It hints at what I believe is a very flimsy interpretation which seems to be almost universally accepted as true.

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This concludes Part 1 of my response to Mr. Piper’s article and the questions raised by the brother who brought it to my attention. I’ll continue with the questions and my answers in Part 2 & Part 3.

— Matthew Neal

The “Traditional” Christian View of Nakedness – Introduction

Prologue

I recently had a reader contact me and ask me to comment on an article by John Piper about nudity entitled, The Rebellion of Nudity and the Meaning of Clothing. I thought it might be appropriate to include my responses here on the blog.
Before I do, however, let me explain why I put “Traditional” in quotes for the title of this post.
For the past 300 years or so, the view put forth by Mr. Piper has been the prevailing orthodox view on nakedness. That makes it pretty “traditional.” It is indeed the view that pervades just about all the conservative theological resources available in English today. However, the view cannot be considered Traditional in the same way we would categorize a doctrine that can be traced back to the early church’s beliefs and practices; in the scope of Christian history, this view of nakedness is a relatively recent theological perspective.
My purpose for quoting Mr. Piper’s article here is to demonstrate that while in some ways “traditional,” it is not fundamentally biblical.
I mean no disrespect or insult to Mr. Piper, of course. He has written many wonderful things and has had a tremendously positive impact on the Kingdom of God in our time.
However, in his article on this topic, I am suggesting that Mr. Piper has only restated the theological traditions that he and every other English-speaking student of theology have been taught in the past 300 or so years. In my opinion, it is a fair and reasonable summary of the “traditional” position on nakedness… but I fear that he and so many others have failed to critically examine the biblical foundation for the position. I’m confident that if they really had, they would have found it to be as weak and inconsistent as I have found.
It may sound like I’m making myself out to be “smarter” than all the theologians for the past 300 years… but I am not. I simply believe that others have not (for whatever reason) genuinely and/or honestly questioned the biblical integrity of the view, so they haven’t seen or acknowledged its faults.
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Introduction

To begin this series, my first post simply quotes the article in its entirety without any written comment. However, I am going to highlight in red the portions that I consider to be indefensible from the Scriptures; these portions of the position are the “traditional” understandings that I believe are actually in error. I will save my comments on them for another post.
As you read through it, see if you can think of any Scripture passages that definitively teach the portions of the article in red.
[All links within the text are original to the article as posted by Mr. Piper]
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The Rebellion of Nudity and the Meaning of Clothing

April 24, 2008 | by John Piper | The first consequence of Adam’s and Eve’s sin mentioned in Genesis 3:7 is that “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Suddenly they are self-conscious about their bodies. Before their rebellion against God, there was no shame. “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25). Now there is shame. Why? There is no reason to think that it’s because they suddenly became ugly. Their beauty wasn’t the focus in Genesis 2:25, and their ugliness is not the focus here in Genesis 3:7. Why then the shame? Because the foundation of covenant-keeping love collapsed. And with it the sweet, all-trusting security of marriage disappeared forever. The foundation of covenant-keeping love between a man and a woman is the unbroken covenant between them and God—God governing them for their good and they enjoying him in that security and relying on him. When they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that covenant was broken and the foundation of their own covenant-keeping collapsed. They experienced this immediately in the corruption of their own covenant love for each other. It happened in two ways. Both relate to the experience of shame. In the first case, the one viewing my nakedness is no longer trustworthy, so I am afraid I will be shamed. In the second, I myself am no longer at peace with God, but I feel guilty and defiled and unworthy—I deserve to be shamed. In the first case, I am self-conscious of my body, and I feel vulnerable to shame because I know Eve has chosen to be independent from God. She has made herself central in the place of God. She is essentially now a selfish person. From this day forward, she will put herself first. She is no longer a servant. So she is not safe. And I feel vulnerable around her, because she is very likely to put me down for her own sake. So suddenly my nakedness is precarious. I don’t trust her any more to love me with pure covenant-keeping love. That’s one source of my shame. The other source is that Adam himself, not just his spouse, has broken covenant with God. If she is rebellious and selfish, and therefore unsafe, so am I. But the way I experience it in myself is that I feel defiled and guilty and unworthy. That’s, in fact, what I am. Before the Fall, what was and what ought to have been were the same. But now, what is and what ought to be are not the same. I ought to be humbly and gladly submissive to God. But I am not. This huge gap between what I am and what I ought to be colors everything about me—including how I feel about my body. So my wife might be the safest person in the world, but now my own sense of guilt and unworthiness makes me feel vulnerable. The simple, open nakedness of innocence now feels inconsistent with the guilty person that I am. I feel ashamed. So the shame of nakedness arises from two sources, and both of them are owing to the collapse of the foundation of covenant love in our relationship with God. One is that Eve is no longer reliable to cherish me; she has become selfish and I feel vulnerable that she will put me down for her own selfish ends. The other is that I already know that I am guilty myself, and the nakedness of innocence contradicts my unworthiness—I am ashamed of it. Genesis 3:7 says that they tried to cope with this new situation by making clothing: “They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Adam’s and Eve’s effort to clothe themselves was a sinful effort to conceal what had really happened. They tried to hide from God (Genesis 3:8). Their nakedness felt too revealing and too vulnerable. So they tried to close the gap between what they were and what they ought to be by covering what is, and presenting themselves in a new way. So what does it mean that God clothed them with animal skins? Was he confirming their hypocrisy? Was he aiding and abetting their pretense? If they were naked and shame-free before the Fall, and if they put on clothes to minimize their shame after the Fall, then what is God doing by clothing them even better than they can clothe themselves? I think the answer is that he is giving a negative message and a positive message. Negatively, he is saying, You are not what you were and you are not what you ought to be. The chasm between what you are and what you ought to be is huge. Covering yourself with clothing is a right response to this—not to conceal it, but to confess it. Henceforth, you shall wear clothing, not to conceal that you are not what you should be, but to confess that you are not what you should be. One practical implication of this is that public nudity today is not a return to innocence but rebellion against moral reality. God ordains clothes to witness to the glory we have lost, and it is added rebellion to throw them off. And for those who rebel in the other direction and make clothes themselves a means of power and prestige and attention getting, God’s answer is not a return to nudity but a return to simplicity (1 Timothy 2:9-10; 1 Peter 3:4-5). Clothes are not meant to make people think about what is under them. Clothes are meant to direct attention to what is not under them: merciful hands that serve others in the name of Christ, beautiful feet that carry the gospel where it is needed, and the brightness of a face that has beheld the glory of Jesus. Now we have already crossed over to the more positive meaning of clothing that God had in his mind when he clothed Adam and Eve with animal skins. This was not only a witness to the glory we lost and a confession that we are not what we should be, but it is also a testimony that God himself would one day make us what we should be. God rejected their own self-clothing. Then he did it himself. He showed mercy with superior clothing. Together with the other hopeful signs in the context (like the defeat of the serpent in Genesis 3:15), God’s mercy points to the day when he will solve the problem of our shame decisively and permanently. He will do it with the blood of his own Son (as there apparently was blood shed in the killing of the animals of the skins). And he will do it with the clothing of righteousness and the radiance of his glory (Galatians 3:27; Philippians 3:21). Which means that our clothes are a witness both to our past and present failure and to our future glory. They testify to the chasm between what we are and what we should be. And they testify to God’s merciful intention to bridge that chasm through Jesus Christ and his death for our sins.

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There were some portions which I did not highlight because I judged them to be defensible in the whole of Scripture. However, I believe that I can make a logical—if not biblical—case for an alternative explanation for each section which I highlighted.
I welcome any comments or questions about sections that anyone might believe I have highlighted in red unfairly or inaccurately. I will be happy to include my reasoning and alternative understandings in subsequent posts.
— Matthew Neal
(See my follow-up articles: Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3 )

Who Hates Nudity… God or Satan?

I’ll wager very few people have ever asked that question.

Is the answer obvious? I don’t think so.

The way things are in our culture today, you might quickly conclude that God hates nudity because it’s so closely associated with perversion and sexual sin.

On the other hand, you might assume that because it is such a powerful tool for sexual temptation, Satan simply loves nudity! “The best tool in my toolbox!” you can almost hear him brag.

Stop and Think About It…

Perhaps the answer isn’t that simple. And certainly the Bible would have something to say about it, right? Well, I believe there’s plenty of evidence in the Bible to tell us who hates nudity, and who doesn’t.

Let me start with God and give the biblical facts, then I’ll give the facts as they relate to Satan. A simple examination of all the facts should lead us to the right answer.

God’s View of Nudity.

• God Created mankind in His own image (Gen. 1:26-27).
  • God made us to look like Him; human beings are a divine “self-portrait.” (articles: 1 2 3)
  • Our image-bearing is utterly and completely unrelated to clothing. In other words, we are “in God’s Image” without clothes. Clothing contributes nothing to that fact.
  • God forbade murder for the very fact that our bodies are made in His image. Murder is the only destruction of the body (the soul and spirit are not destroyed) (Gen. 9:5).
• God’s original design for human society was complete nudity (Gen. 2:25).
  • The creation, as God pronounced it (with the first couple completely nude) was “very good!” (Gen. 1:31)
  • Because God cannot change (Psalm 55:19), we must conclude that He considers the naked human body just as “good” now as He did before the fall. Man’s view of nudity certainly changed with the fall, but God’s view cannot and did not change.
• The first overt evidence of sin in Adam’s life was the fact that he no longer accepted his own nudity as good and right (Gen. 3:6-7).
  • God’s question to Adam, “Who told you that you were naked?” was not an affirmation, it was a rebuke (Gen. 3:11).
  • God’s next question—delivered without waiting for an answer to the first—was, “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” Adam’s rejection of his own nudity signified a rejection of God’s place of authority in his life.
• God blessed the physical union of Adam and Eve, describing it as becoming “one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24) Through this union, He expected them to obey His command to “be fruitful and multiply.” (Gen. 1:28, Gen. 9:1)
  • This plurality-expressed-as–a-unity (which may mirror the unity-in-plurality of the triune Godhead – Gen. 1:26 Gen. 2:24) literally requires the nudity of the man and the woman. God approves of and blesses the union (Proverbs 5:18); he must also approve of and bless the naked state through which it is experienced (Hebrews 13:4).
  • The fruit of the womb are a blessing from the Lord (Psalm 127:3). Every baby ever delivered has been born with the mother’s naked body exposed. Every baby ever born has been born completely naked. This blessed and joyful nakedness is by the hand of God.
• In all of God’s Old Testament laws and in all of the New Testament instructions, never once has God declared animosity towards simple nudity.
  • All bathing and the elimination of body waste of necessity had to outdoors when the Law was given, yet God never told them to avoid the exposure of their bodies to others (All He told them was to make sure they buried their feces! - Deuteronomy 23:13).
  • God actually commanded one of His prophets to prophecy nude for three years (Isa. 20:2-3). God could and would never lead a prophet to actually do something which He hated.
  • Jesus Himself—Who never sinned—was nude on multiple occasions in His life on earth (birth, circumcision, baptism, foot-washing-John 13:3-4, crucifixion-John 19:23-24, and resurrection-John 20:6-7).

Satan’s View of Nudity

• Satan is opposed to God. That which God loves and blesses, Satan hates and distorts (Matthew 16:23).
• Satan was not made in God’s image… only mankind was (Gen. 1:26-27).
  • Satan sinned because he wanted to be “like God” but could not (Isaiah 14:13-15). When God made mankind in His image, it gave man a likeness to God that Satan himself would never possess.
  • Satan is a murderer (John 8:44). Murder is the destruction of the human body (Matthew 10:28), which bears God’s image (Gen. 9:5).
• The very first thing that Satan influenced Adam and Eve to do after they submitted to his will was to cover their naked bodies (Gen. 3:6-7).
  • Satan was the “who” of “Who told you [Adam] that you were naked?” (Gen. 3:11). While we are not told in the text that this is true, Satan is the only player in the entire story (God, Satan, Adam, or Eve) who had the knowledge and motivation to tell Adam that he was naked.
  • While Satan’s specific words to Adam and Eve after the fall are not recorded, we can be certain that he did not (and has not) from that moment forward been silent.
  • Jesus called Satan “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31). He has exerted influence of deception on the thoughts and actions of all mankind ever since the fall (John 8:44).
• Satan hates marriage and the beauty of marital sexual union.
  • Satan has sought to dismiss, dishonor, or destroy marriage since the beginning (as contrasted to God’s will stated in Hebrews 13:4).
  • Satan desires to distort and defile sexual union since the beginning (Genesis 6:1-5).
• Satan has been fully and completely defeated by a naked Savior (John 16:11)!
  • Although Satan battered the naked body of our Lord almost beyond recognition (Isaiah 53:2-3), yet Jesus died without any sin of His own so that He could take all the sin of the world in His body on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 John 2:2, 1 Peter 2:24).
  • Although Jesus lay clothed in the tomb for three days, He left every stitch of that clothing behind when He came out of the grave (John 20:6-7), bodily risen from the dead! This, indeed, was the final and fatal blow to Satan’s head (Gen. 3:15)!

So, What’s the Conclusion?

When you look at the biblical data above, it’s pretty clear that the one who hates the unclothed human form is not God, but Satan!

How Satan Treats Nudity

How does that biblical conclusion square with what we see in our world today? It appears that the only place you find nudity exposed today is within the domain of Satan’s work! Pornography, sexual immorality, sexual perversion, even Satanism and witchcraft all use nudity.

But think about it… that which someone loves, they protect, preserve, and honor. That which they hate, they abuse, destroy, and dishonor.This is true for no one more than it is for Satan.

Tell me… does pornography and sexual immorality protect the nude human body? Does perversion preserve the human body? Do occultic activities honor the unclothed human body? No, no, and no.

Satan exposes nudity within pornography to dishonor the body. He uses it to distort sexuality… to bring destruction to the body. He uses it to deceive us into rejecting the sight of God’s image as found in the unadorned human form. We—the church—have God’s Word… we should know better!

The World Bought It All.

Satan’s efforts have been very successful.

• He has caused almost all of society to spurn the public exposure of the naked human body.
• He has so distorted our understanding of its exposure that we only see sexuality there, ignoring or completely denying the image of God.
• He has so deftly crafted an impossible standard of “beauty” that young women learn almost universally to hate the look of their own bodies, considering them “ugly.”
• He has managed to get us to believe that seeing the sags and wrinkles of aging human bodies is somehow “disgusting” and repulsive… something you don’t want to see in others, and which you don’t want seen in yourself.

This is the world’s view of the naked human body. And this is Satan’s work.

Satan hates the naked human body. And for millennia, we have followed in Adam’s footsteps, listening to Satan’s voice urging us to participate in his insult of the Creator. Even the Church has been duped into promoting this offense against God… treating it instead as if it were a sign of holiness.

Testimony of a Hostile Witness

Satan’s abuse of nudity is compelling evidence that he hates it. And (if the scriptures provided above weren’t enough), it is also compelling evidence that the nude human form is actually dear to the heart of God.

If Satan hates that which God loves, shouldn’t we love that which Satan hates?

But What About the Animal Skins?

I can’t finish this article without saying something about the skins God provided to Adam and Eve for clothing after the fall. Almost all non-naturist Christians point to that passage and use it to claim that “God really doesn’t want us to be naked now after all!”

Is that what the Bible says? Allow me to quote the account in its entirety:

“The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” (Gen. 3:21)

What do we learn from that brief account? Very little, actually. There is no command. There is no reason given. There is no proclamation of a shift in the divine perspective on the nature of nudity… although many people quote the verse as if there were.

Any and every understanding of why God gave them clothes must be “read into” the text, because the explanation of God’s purpose simply is not there! Quite frankly, alternative understandings actually fit the context better, but they too must be “read into” the account.

The only thing we can conclude for sure is that God does not object to clothing. But we would be in error if we allowed assumptions about God’s (unexplained!) action to overrule God’s clearly stated proclamation in reference to the Creation and its naked inhabitants before the fall. God never called the clothes, “very good.” Only nudity was ever described that way (Gen. 1:26-27,31, Gen. 2:25).

I See a Problem…

So… God looked at nudity and said “Very Good!”

Satan looked at nudity and said, “Very Bad!”

The Church today looks at nudity and says, “Very Bad!”

Do you see a problem here?

— Matthew Neal

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See also:

• Longing for Eden
• Naturist by Biblical Conviction??? — [Part 1]

A Voice of Reason and Truth!

The Naturist Living Podcast has been around for a while. I’ve listened to a few of them. They’re good and informative. But this time, Stéphane Deschênes, the creator of the podcast, produced a masterpiece. (Stéphane Deschênes is owner of the Bare Oaks Naturist Family Naturist Park, and President of Federation of Canadian Naturists)

His topic for Episode #27 was Pornography.

Most non-naturists think that pornography is really just about nudity… consequently, the practice of naturism is presumed to be “live pornography.” Those who participate in naturism, it is assumed, are voyeurs and exhibitionists. Ultimately, if people are naked with other naked people, it will invariably result in an orgiastic frenzy… or so goes the fantasy.

That is a fantasy that the porn industry is delighted that people believe. If people really understood the truth, they would be embracing naturism as the best practical antidote to pornography available to us today!

As Mr. Deschênes so aptly points out in the podcast, Naturism is the antithesis of pornography!

I can think of several ways that this is true…

• Pornography degrades and objectifies women and their bodies;
• Naturism honors the goodness of the entire woman… including her body, and refuses to sexually objectify any body part!
• Pornography promotes a man’s unrestrained conquest of a woman’s sexuality;
• Naturism demands a man’s conquest of himself and his own sexuality (also called “self-control”… a fruit of the Spirit!).
• Pornography exhibits that which is perverse and unnatural (some of it is unspeakably degrading);
• Naturism experiences that which is utterly natural (sun, wind, and water caressing the naturally unadorned human body).
• Pornography inhibits and damages relationships;
• Naturism fosters openness and relational unity.
• Pornography tells lies about the body and sexuality;
• Naturism lives the truth of who we really are as human beings.

The best antidote to pornography is not the judicious covering of parts of our bodies, but the frank and natural exposure of our bodies in non-sexual, mixed-gender contexts. How else will young men learn that the female body is actually the embodiment of a real person? How else will the young woman really and truly understand that her body is fine the way it is… and that the objectifying treatment she receives from men is not “just the way guys are,” but actually the rejection of her true dignity as a young woman?

Mr. Deschênes also makes another claim that I’ve been trying very hard to communicate… that the real basis for sexual arousal is relational rather than visual… even for men!!! The believe that men are “visually aroused” is a conditioned response that has been unwittingly planted and cultivated by the historical church’s prudery, then fertilized, watered, and harvested by the porn industry.

It has been disheartening to me how pervasive this lie is in our culture. Sadly… it’s still believed even by many naturists, despite the fact that their naturist experiences argue powerfully against it.

The best antidote to this lie is not to limit nudity to contexts where sex is the expected activity, but the frank and natural exposure of our bodies in non-sexual, mixed-gender contexts. How else will the nudity/sex conditioning be broken?

Tragically, in our culture today, the very best solution to the porn problem is so closely linked to pornography in people’s minds that they never even consider it as a solution! I have no admiration for the enemy of our souls, but I have to acknowledge the wild success of this, his strategy to keep people bound to the lies of pornography.

It’s good to hear another voice speaking the truth in the face of porn’s lies.

I encourage you to go to the Naturist Living website and listen to the podcast. Or, if you want to download the audio, you can find it here: Naturist Living Podcast #27 - Pornography (mp3 format).

Several of my previous posts speak directly to the issues raised by Mr. Deschênes. You might want to review these articles:

• The Objectification of Women – Part 1 (and Part 2)
• The Stuff of Fantasies…
• I would NOT be a naturist if…
• Naturist by Biblical Conviction??? — [Part 1] (Part 2, Part 3)
• Naturism and Gender Identity

Thank you again, Mr. Deschênes.

— Matthew Neal

The Meaning of “Nakedness” – Part 1

What does nakedness mean?

That by itself might be a worthwhile question for discussion, but it would likely be very difficult to nail down. Doctors would respond very differently than pornographers. Indigenous jungle tribes would respond very differently than Western Christians. However, this post is not about that topic. I’ll restate the question above this way:

What does the term “nakedness” mean in the Old Testament?

Most of the passages speaking to nakedness of any sort are found in the Old Testament, and it is within its pages that most Bible teachers today draw their conclusions about what God thinks about nakedness.

If we really want to know what God’s perspective is towards nudity, it stands to reason that we must correctly understand the words He chose to use when He inspired the biblical authors to write the Scriptural texts. 

OT Words Describing Nakedness

Here’s a very brief overview of the three primary terms referencing nakedness in the Old Testament:

• arowm [H6174] (ex. Gen. 2:25, 1 Sam 19:24, Job 1:21) — This term refers to the condition of simple and innocent nakedness.
• eyrom [H5903] (ex. Gen. 3:7 & 10, Deut. 28:48, Eze. 18:7) — This term seems to indicate nakedness with a sense of being exposed to harm.
• ervah [H6172] (ex. Gen. 9:22, Exo. 28:42, Lev. 18:6) — This term seems to indicate a sinful, shameful, and/or sexual nakedness.

Those that know more than tell me that all three of these words have their basis in the same root Hebrew Word, but their biblical usage seems to indicate slightly different shades of meaning.

Without going into an exhaustive demonstration of their usage, I can state very definitively that the first two terms are never described by God as shameful. For personal examination of these words, you can see a listing of everywhere these words appear in the Hebrew text by clicking the links after each word above.

Essentially every passage where nakedness is considered “shameful” by God in the OT text, the Hebrew word used is ervah. Consequently, this is the word we most need to ensure that is correctly understood; if we hold a faulty definition of this word, then interpretations drawn from passages containing the word will very likely be faulty as well. And since we need to correctly understand God’s view of nakedness, it is of central importance that we understand the biblical definition of ervah.

A Full Word Study on ervah — A Summary of My Findings

There is not room in this blog post to present such a study, but I have researched it and prepared a full document of the word study that I will link you to at the conclusion of this post. Here, I will only summarize my findings. If anyone disagrees with my conclusions, I would strongly urge you to carefully examine the full document to discern if and where I may have erred. If you find something, I welcome discussion and/or correction.

Part 1 - The Natural Meaning

The natural etymological meaning of ervah is exactly that to which it is generally translated in English—“nakedness”—which simply is the state of being unclothed. Therefore, my starting point for my study was to assume this definition.

The word ervah appears 54 times in the OT. I examined every instance to see if the natural meaning of the word made sense in every case. My assumption was that if the natural meaning made sense, there would be no need to look any further for a clearer definition.

In some instances, the natural meaning did make sense in the passage. For example:

“Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness [ervah] of his father, and told his two brothers outside.” (Gen. 9:22)

In this and a few other verses, the word “nakedness” communicates a very understandable and straightforward meaning.

However, the majority passages seemed a little unclear with the natural meaning. The words themselves made enough sense, but God’s intended meaning leaves us puzzled. For example:

“Then Saul’s anger burned against Jonathan and he said to him, ‘You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you are choosing the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother's nakedness [ervah]?’” (1 Sam. 20:30)

The words make sense, but what could Jonathan’s kindness towards David possibly have to do with the nakedness of his mother?

Finally, some passages using ervah made little or no sense at all when using the natural meaning of the word. In several such cases, the translators didn’t even bother using “nakedness” to translate ervah; instead, they used a different word that made more sense in the context. This by itself is evidence that the natural meaning of the Hebrew word was not what the original author had in mind. Here’s an example (using “nakedness” where ervah appears rather than the word “indecency” which the NASB translators used):

“When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some nakedness [ervah] in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce… (Deut. 24:1)

When a man marries a woman, it is to be expected that he would see her naked thereafter. Yet this law deals with a case when a man finds “nakedness” in his new wife and decides to divorce her as a result. Clearly, in this passage, the natural meaning of ervah cannot be an accurate definition of the word. There must be something else that he’s finding there.

Conclusion to Part 1

The purpose of Part 1 was to examine the natural meaning of the word ervah to discern if it adequately satisfies the various passages where the word is used. In my opinion, the natural meaning of ervah (meaning “nakedness” or simply being “without clothes”) does not sufficiently satisfy the usage of the word in many of the passages where it appears in the Hebrew text.

Therefore the word must have connotations beyond the natural meaning, or else it must have two or more distinct definitions.

In my next blog post, Part 2 – the Connotations, I will examine the possibility that there are consistent connotations in the Scriptural usage of ervah in order to craft a more clear and biblical definition of the word. If such connotations can be discerned, then it can and should inform our interpretation of any Scripture where it appears.

To reiterate… until we know for sure what ervah means, we cannot be confident that we know God’s perspective on nakedness.

— Matthew Neal

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This blog post is a summary of part 1 of the full word study on ervah. The complete document may be downloaded here.

The Stuff of Fantasies…

Why is it that most Christian men assume that if a man goes to a naturist resort, he’s doing it to look at all the naked women?

Of course, I don’t know the answer empirically since I’ve never asked anyone else, but I have my own theory…

Been there, done that…

Before I became a naturist, I struggled like so many others with fantasies about naked women.

Having been raised in a very conservative Christian home, I never ever saw my mother unclothed. And since I had no sisters, I never even saw any female unclothed as a small child. Once puberty hit and I began to have interest in the fairer gender, I still had essentially no idea what the nude female body really looked like.

I used to look at Mark Eden ads (a bust line enhancement product) in my grandmother’s magazines, or look through the lingerie pictures in that big ol’ J. C. Penney catalog. As I looked at them, sometimes I would just wish and wish that they would take off what little they were wearing so I could see their bodies completely unclothed. Of course, they never did.

The ultimate opportunity!

Everyone’s heard about “nudist colonies” where people (including women!!) go completely naked all the time! Imagine that!! You can bet I fantasized about finding a knot-hole in the fence around such a place so that I could look in and see this marvelous yet forbidden sight!

But as a maturing Christian young man, this was not an acceptable fantasy for me to dwell on. Nudity was about sex, and I was saving myself for my future wife. To even imagine seeing other women naked was mental adultery (Matthew 5:27-28) because I could not have a sexual relationship with them. Seeing someone naked was equivalent to experiencing them sexually. To desire to see them naked was nothing less than sinful lust. Right?

The Obvious “Conclusion.”

So… any thoughts about ever seeing the naked people at a “nudist colony” are forever and always associated with lust. That was sure clear to me. Only the lustful and ungodly would even think about such a place. Certainly no godly Christian man would ever contemplate going to a place where everyone was unclothed.

 

Am I alone in thinking this way?

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s ever thought about a nudist venue this way. I think just about every young man has been intrigued by the very idea that there might be places where all the women are naked. Whether he’s indulged it or rejected it, the notion captured his attention. And those who have become committed Christians and have purposely determined that they wanted to be sexually pure before God have dutifully repented of their lustful desires to see it.

Whether he indulged in fantasies about seeing nudists as a young man or not, he now guards against fantasies about any sort of social nudity. And since he knows what seeing naked women would mean in his own heart, he’s quite sure that every other man responds the same way… and every other Christian man should reject social nudity for the same reasons that he himself has. Righteousness demands it!

The “Conclusion” is not in question…

Nobody ever bothers to question that conclusion according to Scripture. Consequently, if any man claiming to be a Christian attends a naturist resort (they’re not called “nudist colonies”), most other Christian men would dismiss that man as one who is in obvious sin rather than take into account the rest of his life, conduct, and character.

They “know” that man is in sin because the only time they themselves have ever imagined looking on naked women at a “nudist colony” was when they themselves were indulging in lustful fantasies!

It’s easier to condemn another man’s actions than to question one’s own assumptions.

 

Morality is not based on Fantasies.

Yes, going to a place where all the women are naked is the stuff of fantasies. Probably every young man has had such fantasies…

But morality is not based on fantasy, it’s based upon TRUTH!

The truth is this:

• A naturist resort is not a sexual context (or it’s not truly naturist!).
• Seeing someone naked is not equivalent to experiencing that person sexually.
• Even if you expected it to be a sexual turn-on, after a very short time watching a mixed bag of people doing very non-sexual thing unclothed, you’d find it very sexually boring.

And then there’s the Biblical truth about it:

• The Bible never tells us that we can never be around or see other people naked.
• Jesus didn’t say that to look at a woman was mental adultery, He said that it was looking at her “with lust.” (Matthew 5:27-28) There’s a huge difference… Ask any doctor.
• Social nudity was originally God’s idea… and ideal. In the beginning, Adam and Eve “were both naked and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:25)
• God never rescinded that ideal. There’s no command in Genesis 3:21 or anywhere else in all the Bible that requires us to be clothed in order to be pleasing to Him.

 

I dare you…

If you’re reading this and are still convinced that I’m wrong, then I know for sure that you’ve never personally been to a naturist resort. So… I dare you to go. Take your clothes off and participate (don’t go as a voyeur). Only then do you have any basis upon which to tell me how “sinful” and “sexual” social nudity is.

But you won’t… because there’s nothing like a dose of reality to dispel the fantasies.

— Matthew Neal

The Objectification of Women – Part 2

So, gentlemen… how much of a woman’s body has to be covered before you can look at her without lust?

How you answer will tell us how much—and what parts—of a woman’s body you objectify.

Is it her breasts? Her legs? Her butt? Her belly? All of the above?

Let Me Be Very Honest with You…

For many years, I objectified women’s breasts as a sexual turn-on. So long as they were covered, I did not have a problem with lustful thoughts when I saw and/or interacted with a woman. But if I ever saw them exposed (even if only partially), it was “automatic” sexual thoughts and arousal.

Even in my sexual relationship with my wife, I tended to focus on her breasts as a trigger for my arousal and fulfillment. In other words, I was objectifying my own wife. When we entered into the sex act, I ceased interacting with the person who is my wife (with whom I share a deep relationship), and started using her as a sex object for my own sexual satisfaction.

Dare I look upon any woman as if the sight of her breasts trumps her personhood? No woman deserves that… not even my wife!

Sex is, at its core, about relationship. God established this in Gen. 2:24 when He said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” The “one flesh” sexual union is divinely decreed as a physical expression of the newly established marriage relationship.

To be sure, a woman’s body is visually attractive, but her body is an expression of her person. To define any part of a woman’s body according to its sexual impact upon us is to objectify her body and demean her personhood!

Wouldn’t every woman rather know that it was her real self that attracted and aroused her husband, not just her body parts? Wouldn’t that be more honoring and fulfilling relationally… for husband and wife?

Men, if there is any part of a woman’s body to which you only have a sexual response, then you are objectifying that part of the woman. If you objectify any part of a woman, you objectify the woman, for she is a whole person… spirit, soul, and body.

In Part 1 of this series, I addressed the societal objectification of women and their bodies. Here in Part 2, I am asking you to ponder the personal objectification of women’s bodies in your own heart.

There may be little or no hope for a wholesale transformation of society in this matter. However, if we are willing to take a hard look within our own hearts and minds—and endeavor to address what we discern there—we will find that the truth really does have the power to transform us. A woman’s body parts are not about sex. They are beautiful expressions of the person that God created her to be. We must appreciate the beauty without divorcing it from the complete person she is. When we do, we will finally be innocent of the objectification of women.

So… What Does This Have to Do with Naturism?

First of all, as I pointed out in Part 1, naturists—probably more consistently than any other definable group—do not objectify women’s bodies. They simply do not consider a sexual response to the sight of a woman’s body to be appropriate in a social context, let alone “automatic.” They treat every woman—no matter the size or shape of her body—with acceptance, dignity, and respect. To become a naturist, you must lay aside the objectification in your own heart.

Secondly, if a man never sees any nudity except in a sexual context, it may prove very difficult for him to really break free from the body-part/sexual-response association in his mind. However, the very experience of social nudity (which is not a sexual context) will very quickly cast out the false expectations of a sexual response to the mere sight of a woman’s unclothed body. There is probably no quicker cure.

If, for whatever reason, real social nudity is not possible for you to experience, then at very least spend as much time as possible with your own wife—both of you naked—when sex is not on the agenda. Grow accustomed to relating to her as a person non-sexually even while you can see every inch of her body. You’ll find that it’s really not that difficult. And have no fear that you will not be able to “perform” if you get “too accustomed” to seeing her naked… when you’re both in the mood for sex, relational arousal beats visual arousal any day!

A Higher Calling

Of all people in the world, we as Christian men should be leading the way… treating women with their true God-given dignity. Let us repent of our sin and conquer it in our own hearts. Let us train our sons (and daughters) to honor all women… refusing to be swayed or infected by our culture’s objectifying pattern of thoughts and responses. And let us demonstrate to the church of our Lord Jesus Christ that there is a more godly and biblical understanding of our bodies than that which our church tradition has taught us.

— Matthew Neal

P.S. Don’t ever refer to any woman as “hot.” It’s a term of objectification. It has no place in the vocabulary of a godly man.

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See also:

The Objectification of Women - Part 1

Naturist by Biblical Conviction